


Beauclair Bait Shop

by ladivvinatravestia



Series: Trick or Treat 2020 [2]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Head Injury, Physical Restraints, Whump, canon-typical gendered slurs, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:14:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26787274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladivvinatravestia/pseuds/ladivvinatravestia
Summary: Geralt is captured by bandits who have this fantastic plan to use him as bait for a vampire
Relationships: Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Series: Trick or Treat 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950247
Comments: 12
Kudos: 70





	Beauclair Bait Shop

**Author's Note:**

> For Whumptober 2020 prompts “collars” and “kidnapped”

When Geralt comes to, his head is still pounding and he can feel a cold, clammy band of dimeritium encircling his neck. It dampens over all his senses and covers them with a barely-perceptible but persistent buzzing sensation. He grits his teeth and tries to take stock of the rest of the situation.

He flexes his muscles, starting at his shoulders and working down to his toes. Too subtle, he hopes, for human captors to notice the motion. And he thinks his captors are humans. A bandit camp, deceptively small on the outside when he’d stumbled across it, but turning out to hid many more skilled combatants than he’d thought. Now, he can feel - he’s been stripped of his armour but allowed his clothing, thank fuck. His wrists and ankles are shackled with yet more dimeritium, and for good measure, he’s been thoroughly hogtied. As for wounds - the deep ache in his gut tells him he’s slowly but surely recovering from a cut that would have killed an ordinary man, and his shoulders, thighs, and the side of his head all smart where lesser cuts are knitting themselves back together. Under the constant buzzing of the dimeritium bonds, he can smell the stale copper tang of blood - his own, and his enemies’ - covering his skin and his clothing and matted in his hair.

The smell, together with his throbbing head and the jolting motion of the cart he’s now being transported in like a prize hog to market, makes his bile begin to rise. He squeezes his eyes more tightly shut and tries to breathe through his nose. These contracts from the Ducal Camerlengo are barely paying enough to be worth it - but yet, with opponents this dangerous, better that Geralt takes them on than some callow young knight-errant hoping to prove himself to his beloved before settling down and starting a family.

He’s rewarded for showing signs of consciousness by a booted foot to his gut, right where he was stabbed. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek to avoid letting out a grunt of pain.

“Fucker’s awake,” reports one of his captors.

“Hit him over the head again,” suggests another, “we don’t want him getting away before we reach the drop point.”

And that’s the last Geralt hears before something hits him about the head like a sack full of bricks. Perhaps it  _ is _ a sack full of bricks.

When he comes to again, his gut is sore like the bandits have been using him as a punching bag while he was out. And he’s going to have a black eye for at least a day from that sack of bricks. He cracks his other eye open a sliver to see that night has fallen.

Travelling by cart, they might have been making about four miles an hour. It was just after midday when he attacked the bandits, and the sun tends to set around eight of the clock here in Toussaint. That means he could have been travelling for as many as seven hours, which means he could be - fuck, he doesn’t know Toussaint well enough to know where he might be by now -

“Lebioda’s taint, this is Mere Lachaiselongue Cemetery! What are you thinking?” says one of the bandits, and the cart pulls to a halt. Geralt goes unceremoniously rolling towards the back of the wagon box, and the bandit riding on the tailgate stops him with a boot to the stomach.

“This is where the Beast of Beauclair is hiding out,” explains one of the other bandits, as though the first one is a child.

“Yes, you poxy whoreson, it is,” exclaims the first one, “which is why I’m not driving one step further!”

“No,” says the second one, “we get this freak nice and bloody -“ he pauses to lean into the wagon box and spit in Geralt’s general direction, “- we drop him on the Beast’s doorstep to lure it out, and then we kill it and get our reward from the Duchess.”

“Are you touched in the head?” says the driver. “The Beast is a higher vampire, it’ll mop the gravestones with us and then suck us dry!”

The man riding on the tailgate hops off the now-stationary cart, drawing his sword. “Are you a coward, Hubert?” he demands. Geralt assumes he advances on the driver - at any rate, he disappears from Geralt’s view, leaving the tailgate down.

“Better a live coward than a dead lackwit,” spits Hubert, but from the sounds of things he, too, draws his blade.

Geralt gives his bonds an experimental test as his captors begin to fight one another. The rough road and the additional abuse while Geralt was unconscious seem to have loosed the knots slightly. He doesn’t fancy his chances against a higher vampire while he’s unarmed and unarmored. Of course, once he’s free of the rope he still has the dimeritium cuffs and collar to deal with, but - one thing at a time.

Confident that the bandits won’t hear him over the sound of their own swordplay, he starts easing himself out of the ropes. His arm and leg muscles are stiff, and his every motion feels like it’s reopening his gut wound.

He can tell by the labored sounds of the bandits’ breathing that they’re starting to tire. There’s a bright, sharp scent of freshly-spilled blood that he can smell even over the dulling buzz of the dimeritium. But they’re still fighting, shouting imprecations about each other’s honour, intelligence, and parentage. Geralt sets himself in motion and rolls painfully off the edge of the tailgate to land, heavily, in the dirt. He grits his teeth again to avoid making more noise and then tries to position himself so he can keep an eye on the fighting from between the wheels of the cart.

A few more bandits arrive, having apparently been following the cart on their horses, and immediately join the fighting without seemingly stopping to see what the dispute is about or who is on what side. Geralt rolls surreptitiously further to the side, continuing to observe. There’s a flash of motion from the entrance to the main crypt, and for a brief moment, Geralt thinks he is about to witness the awesome destruction that a higher vampire is capable of unleashing on mortals.

But the next moment, the bandits are all still fighting each other, and there is a set of surprisingly small and ugly boots walking slowly and carefully into Geralt’s immediate field of view. The boots are attached to a pair of tattered and grubby hose and the hem of an open gown; and as Geralt turns on his side to look up at the person belonging to the clothes, he’s convinced he’s already dead, because,

“Regis?” he croaks in disbelief. His throat is dry and scratchy and he realizes he’s had nothing at all to drink since noon.

Regis crouches down, a finger to his mouth, and smiles gently. “I figured I’d let these fools wear themselves out attacking each other rather than wasting my energy on them.” He does some sort of  _ thing _ that clouds Geralt’s mind for a moment, and the dimeritium bonds fall away harmlessly.

“I saw you die,” says Geralt stupidly.

“And I don’t want to see you die,” says Regis, and reaches down to clasp Geralt’s hand. “So why don’t we get you inside and get some food and water into you. And then, I’m afraid, we have a lot to discuss.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [tumblr](%E2%80%9C)


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